Special Issues In Public

Personnel Management
(PA-813)
by

COMMO ARMANDO S. RODRIGUEZ

AFP (RET), LLB, MNSA, PH.D.
ISSUES IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
1. Personnel Management
2. Crisis Management
3. Workforce Planning
4. Public Accountability
5. Graft and Corruption in Public Service
6. Budgetting
7. Operational Planning
8. And many more
 The World of Public
Personnel Management

From: Klinger, Donald E. & Nalbandian,

John (2003): Public Personnel
Management
Introduction
 Public personnel management has
been studied extensively, from at least
four perspectives.
 First, it is the functions needed to
manage human resources in public
agencies.
 Second, it is the process by which
public jobs are allocated.
 Third, it is the interaction among
fundamental societal values that often
conflict over who gets public jobs and
how they are allocated.
 Finally, public personnel management is
personnel systems --- the laws, rules,
organizations, and procedures used to
express these abstract values in
fulfilling personnel functions.
 In the United States and many countries like the
Philippines, public personnel management is
widely recognized as a critical element of
democratic society and effective public
administration.
 The development of public personnel
management is complex because there are
multiple levels of governments plus thousands of
governments, each with its own personnel system.
 Today, public personnel management may be
described as a dynamic equilibrium among
competing values, each championed by a
particular personnel system, for allocating
scare public jobs in a complex and changing
environment.
 As one might expect, this conflict exhibits a
commingling of technical decisions (how to do
a personnel function) with a political ones
(what value to favor what system to use).
 Public personnel management consists
of four fundamental functions needed to
manage human resources in public
organizations.
 These functions, designated by the
acronym PADS, are planning,
acquisition, development, and sanction.
 Public Jobs as scarce resources
 Basic decisions about public personnel
management are important because jobs
are the most visible way we measure
economic and social status for individuals
and groups.
 Public jobs are scarce resources because tax
revenues limit them, and their allocation is of
enormous significance for the course of
public policy making generally.
 Because public jobs are scarce and
important, there is competition for them
among individuals and more broadly
among advocates of competing public
personnel values and systems.
Public personnel management
functions 1
Function Purpose
Planning Budget preparation and human
resource planning; dividing tasks
among employees (job analysis,
classification, and evaluation);
deciding how much jobs are worth
(pay and benefits)

Acquisition Recruitment and selection of

employees
Public personnel management
functions 2
Function Purpose
Develop- Orienting, training, motivating, and
ment evaluating employees to increase their
competencies
Sanction Establishing and maintaining
expectations and obligations that
employees and the employer have
toward one another; discipline,
grievances, health and safety, and
employee right
The four traditional values
 Responsiveness
 Efficiency
 Individual right
 Social equity
 Public personnel management may be
seen as the continuous interaction
among fundamental values that often
conflict.
 Political responsiveness
 Political responsiveness is brief that
government answers to the will of the
people expressed through elected officials.
 Applicants’ political and personal loyalty is
best ensured through an appointment
process that considers political loyalty,
along with education and experience, as
indicators of merit.
 Political responsiveness
 Often, in order to promote responsive
government, elected officials are
authorized to fill a certain number of
exempt positions through political
appointment
 Responsiveness / Responsibility
Organizational efficiency and effectiveness

 Organizational efficiency and

effectiveness reflect the desire to
maximize the ratio of inputs to outputs in
any management process.
 This means that decisions about who to
hire, reassign, or promote should be
based on applicants’ and employees’
competencies, rather than political
loyalty.
 employees’ competencies:
1. Knowledge
2. Skill
3. Abilities
 KSAs
 Individual right
 Individual right emphasizes that individual
citizens will be protected from unfair actions of
government officials.
 Public employees’ rights to job security and
due process are maintained through merit
system rules and regulations that protect them
from inappropriate partisan political pressure
(such as requiring them to campaign for
elected officials, or contribute a portion of their
salary toward election campaigns, or run the
risk of losing their jobs if they refuse.)
 Individual right
 In a parallel fashion, public employees
who are union members will have
recourse to work rules, contained in
collective bargaining agreements that
protect them from arbitrary
management decisions.
 Social equity
 Social equity emphasizes fairness to
groups like women, racial minorities, the
disabled, and veterans, that would
otherwise be disadvantaged by a
market economy that accepts the
legitimacy of discrimination hiring and in
pay.
 Social equity
 Like individual rights, social equity is
concerned with fairness. But unlike
individual rights (which are based on
personal attributes like education,
experience, or seniority ), social equity
is concerned with employment
preferences based on membership in a
protected class or group.
Anti-Government Values
 Individual Accountability
 Limited and Decentralized Government
 Community Responsibility
 The underlying contemporary political,
social, and economic forces shaped three
emerging anti-government values:

1. Individual Accountability
2. Limited and Decentralized Government
3. Community Responsibility for social
services
 Individual Accountability
 Proponents of individual accountability
expect that people will make individual
choices consistent with their own goal,
and accept responsibility for the
consequences of their choices, rather
than passing responsibility for their
actions onto the rest of the society.
Limited and Decentralized Government

 Proponents of limited and decentralized

government believe, fundamentally, that
government is to be feared for its power
to arbitrarily or capriciously deprive
individuals of their rights.
 Community Responsibility for
social services
 They believe that governmental
agencies’ effort need to be
supplemented by not-for profit, non-
governmental organization responsible
for social services.
 Personnel System
 Political Patronage: based on the applicant’s
political or personal loyalty to the appointing
official
 Civil Service System: keep “ politics out of
public personnel decision” and to manage
public agencies rationally and efficiently.
 Collective Bargaining: Contracts negotiated
between an agency’s managers and leaders
of the union representing its employees.
 Affirmative Action
 Contemporary System
 Alternative Mechanisms
 Flexible employment relationships
 This Chapter discusses the continued conflict
and interaction among fundamental values,
including the impact of performance
contracting and privatization as alternatives to
traditional civil service.
 And it discusses the evolution of public
personnel systems under diverse conditions
in developing countries, including the link
between government capacity and
democratization.
Observed Problems in Local Scene
 1. Partisanships in Politics
 2. Idolizing
 3. Bribery
 4. Corruption
 5. Stealing
 6. Non-performing employees
 7. Political accommodations
 8. Not reflecting or not filing of SALN
 9. Others
Questions:
1. Why is partisanships in politics prevalent in the
Philippines and what possible solutions can you
profound to curve its ugly consequences in our
economic and political life?
2. Graft and corruptions are everywhere in all corners of
our government. What do you think are the reasons and
how could we curve it or minimize its telling effect to our
economy and image as a civilized country?
3. The 2019 budget was not approved on time to meet
the government programs for the current year. This was
caused by some legislators who inserted huge amount
of money for their respective congressional districts.
This was called illegal by the senators who discovered
this anomaly. Why do you think this is being done by
these unscrupulous congressmen?
QUICK QUIZ

What’s the number one topic that PR

people request in mid-career seminars?

a.k.a. Crisis Management

Issues Management
Risk Communication
Define: Issues Management

Public relations counselor W. Howard Chase

defined it as:

“…the
“…the capacity
capacity toto understand,
understand, mobilize,
mobilize,
coordinate,
coordinate, and
and direct
direct all
all strategic
strategic andand
policy
policy planning
planning functions,
functions, and
and all
all public
public
affairs/public
affairs/public relations
relations skills
skills toward
toward
achievement
achievement of of one
one objective:
objective: meaningful
meaningful
participation
participation in
in public
public policy
policy that
that affects
affects
personal
personal and
and institutional
institutional destiny.”
destiny.”
Issues Management 5-Step Process
Evaluate its program in terms of reaching
organizational goals

Implement action program to communicate the

organizations views and influence perception
on the issue

Display the various strategic options available to the

organization
Analyze and delineate each issue’s impact on
constituent publics
Identify issues with which the organization must be
concerned
 Anticipate Maintain a
emerging profit-line
issues orientation

Plan from the Identify issues Deal with

outside in selectively opportunities

Develop an
Deal from the
action
top
timetable
OVERVIEW
Job Tasks of Issues
Management
I. Identifying issues and trends

II. Evaluating issue impact setting priorities

III. Establishing a company position
IV. Designing company action and response
to achieve results
QUICK QUIZ

What’s involved in…

I. Identifying issues and trends?
 Traditional research methods
 Focus on organization’s own
geographical area
 Stay informed about what is being
said about the organization
QUICK QUIZ

What’s involved in…

II. Evaluating issue impact setting priorities?
 Set up issues committees within the
organization
 Set up priorities within the organization
QUICK QUIZ

What’s involved in…

III. Establishing a company position?
 Formal or informal processes
 Position papers or policy statements
by top managers
QUICK QUIZ

What’s involved in…

I. Designing company action and response
to achieve results
 Aim for integrated responses
 Coordinate various branch offices
 Contact lobbyists
 Speeches, advertising, and employee
updates may be necessary
Let’s Discuss: Risk Communication

“Frequent & Forceful

“Perception is
Communication is
Reality”
Necessary

Health &
High Level of
Environmental
Emotions
Hazards
 Steps to Planning a Risk
Communication Program
Recognize that risk communication is part of a
larger risk management program—based on power,
politics, and controversial issues.

Train management to deal effectively with the news

media.

Develop credible outside experts.

Become an in-house expert to enhance your

credibility with journalists.
 Steps to Planning a Risk
Communication Program
Give the news media solid facts and figures BEFORE they
approach you. Verify and double-check your data.

Research the media’s and other publics’ perceptions

of your organization to gauge credibility.

Understand your target audiences and how the news

can help you communicate effectively.
 MANAGING IN A

Warning signs that appear with crisis:

Loss of
Close Outside Control
Scrutiny

Insufficient
Information
Siege
Mentality
 Managing in a Crisis
1 Define and understand the risk.

2 Describe the actions that might mitigate

risk.

3 Identify the cause of risk.

4 Demonstrate responsible crisis

management
 Be Prepared
 Be Available
 Be Credible
say…

“No Comment”
Public hears that as…

“Guilty!”
for communicating in a crisis

Tell it All
and

Tell it Fast!
 Communicating in a Crisis
 Speak first and often.  Don’t fight with
 Don’t speculate. the media.
 Go off record at your  Establish
own risk. yourself as an
authority.
 Stay with the facts.
 Be opened and
 Stay calm.
concerned, not  Be truthful and
defensive. cooperative.
 Make your point and  Never lie.
repeat it.
HINDSIGHT:
Things Exxon
Should Have Done
1. Develop a clear, straightforward position
2. Involve top management
3. Activate third-party support
4. Establish on-site presence
5. Centralize communications
HINDSIGHT:
Things Exxon
Should Have Done
6. Cooperate with the media
7. Don’t ignore employees
8. Keep the crisis in perspective
9. Position for the time when the crisis is
over
10. Continuously monitor and evaluate
the process
Research Assignment
 Make a research paper on the current issues
and problems of the Philippines and or the
provincial (Palawan) and city (Puerto
Princesa) governments in the current state of
Public Admnistration based in the eight
observed problems in the local scene that
somehow create a big impact on our growth
and development.